Communiations

2

Intercultural Communication

Michael W. Robinson

COMM240

April 1, 2022

My first experience as a traveler, I went to Hawaii and my first impression of Hawaii was that the place was a very beautiful place and I loved my experience in the place very much. Hawaii is beautiful because of the experience that one gets when interacting with the nature and the beautiful beaches in Hawaii. The place is green endowed with some very beautiful waterfalls and vegetation which was a very great view for me to take some very beautiful pictures. I feel that it is a very serene place and I got to visit most of the beaches which were very clean and had some very beautiful beach hotels with good accommodation and services. My very first impression after getting to Hawaii and visiting some places I felt that this is a very beautiful destination where tourists can visit and I felt that the people in Hawaii were very friendly and hospitable making it a good tourist destination.

As indicated, my immediate impression of the place was that it had some really good and hospitable people. When I interacted with the people in Hawaii my immediate reaction was that I showed the people kindness and strived to make sure that I did not offend the people in any way. Most of the communication which I made with the people in Hawaii was verbal and when I was visiting the place, I had fears of whether there would be any language barriers between me and the people (Dasih et al., 2019). I was delighted that I found out so many of the people were speaking in English and that made it easier for me to communicate during my stay in Hawaii. When I was communicating with the people and asking questions, I made sure to give as much details as I could and this helped me be clear in my communication and made it easy for the people to understand me.

If I ever got an opportunity to visit Hawaii as a traveler again there are a few changes I would make and the very first change is that I would book a longer stay. When I visited the place, I only stayed for a couple of days and the tour guides told me about some very beautiful sites that I was not able to visit because my stay was limited. The other thing which I would change would ensure that I would ensure that I have enough finances in place. This would be very important because when I visited the place I had not budgeted enough for the trip and felt that a lot of money was needed to enjoy the place, making more beautiful memories and shop around.

I would describe my entire experience in Hawaii as very awesome and this course taught me so much that would be helpful in future. I have learned so much about intercultural communication and one lesson from the course is that cultural differences can create communication barriers between individuals. I learned that during intercultural communication, it is very important to make sure that you are culturally aware so that you do not end up using any gestures or non-verbal language that would be offensive. I also learned the importance of paying attention to non-verbal communication because there is a lot that is communicated using the body language and facial expressions that might not be put in words (Dasih et al., 2019). I learned about stereotypes and prejudices and how they can impact intercultural communication negatively. Stereotypes are opinions which we have about others and how they behave that in most cases are not always true and affect the reception that we have about people.

References

Dasih, I. G. A. R. P., Triguna, I. B. G. Y., & Winaja, I. W. (2019). Intercultural

communication based on ideology, theology and sociology. International journal of linguistics, literature and culture, 5(5), 29-35.